Puzzling with the V-League record holder Hanoi FC

21/10/2025 15:17:00 GoalGuru

The tough beginning for new coach Harry Kewell at Hanoi FC has pushed the capital club’s ambition to rejoin the championship fight further away, as the first half of the LPBank V-League 2025/26 season is already more than halfway done, yet Hanoi FC has only managed 2 wins and currently sits in the middle of the standings.

V-League history has never recorded a team replacing their head coach mid-season and finishing at the top spot by season’s end, and considering Hanoi FC’s performance since the start of this season, there is little reason to believe Coach Kewell’s team will be able to make history.

Indeed, Hanoi FC under Coach Kewell played a very impressive first 45 minutes in their match against league leaders Ninh Binh on October 18, but a game is not decided in just one half, and conceding two goals with the same scenario in the second half showed that the team’s longstanding problems cannot be quickly fixed by a new coach.

This is not the first time Hanoi FC has ended up empty-handed after matches in which they did not play badly, or even performed very well before conceding goals, and this pattern has continued through many coaching eras, from foreign to local, from Asia to Europe and back to Asia.

If such losses happened only a few times, it might be explained by bad luck, but when defeats of the same kind keep repeating, it is no longer just a matter of luck. Changing the head coach at Hanoi FC seems only to address the superficial issues the club faces, while the fundamental problems remain unchanged through many coaching tenures.

Hanoi FC under Van Quyet has repeatedly changed head coaches in recent seasons but has failed to win any titles. Photo: Hoang Linh

Up to now, Hanoi FC remains one of the rare championship contenders in the V-League without a dedicated base for accommodation and training. The club’s main base is still a rented building beside My Dinh Stadium, just as it was when they first ascended to the V-League in 2009.

Every day, Coach Kewell’s players train on the auxiliary pitch of My Dinh Stadium, which is not exclusively reserved for Hanoi FC but is also regularly rented by amateur teams. Therefore, at times Hanoi FC has had to send players to the Hanoi National Training Center in Nhon for practice, and whether on the auxiliary My Dinh pitch or at Nhon, the turf quality is not guaranteed.

The fact that Hanoi FC cannot have a private, closed training center is one of the main reasons why Coach Daiki Iwamasa left after less than one season leading Hanoi FC, even though the capital club really wanted to keep the young Japanese coach who had demonstrated impressive capability as head coach.

Many reasons have been given to justify why Hanoi FC still does not have its own facility to ensure accommodation and training, but regardless of the reasons, it is difficult to accept for a club that holds the most championship titles in V-League history and will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year.

Between seeking a new foreign coach to quickly restore glorious days and investing in long-term, costly infrastructure, it’s not hard to guess which option tends to be chosen, and what Hanoi FC has gone through since their last V-League title in 2022 may well be the consequence of the capital club’s decisions.

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